• A financial quota share is a form of reinsurance that allows the cedant to increase its legal surplus by the amount of the assignment fee on the reinsured reserve of unearned premiums. The surplus exemption arises because mandatory accounting requires insurers and reinsurers to immediately attribute all acquisition costs to the reporting period in which the business is registered, even if no premium is received at the end of the period. This is called prepaid acquisition costs in the unearned premium reserve or capital in the unearned premium reserve.